That was about all the pomp and ceremony that was involved in his departure from the upshoot of a settlement. The Elves had shit to do and they were set on getting it done. Most of the Prespanger freemen had come out from the shock of their being set upon by their own kindred and had started to really adapt to the reality that their generational enemies were normal people with weird ideas about what constituted humor or good eating. The food was good, the jokes were taking some getting used to, and the man who had taken charge of them, Mage Brodin, was convinced that they should stay close to the barbarian with the Elf wife who'd saved them, and that was good enough for them.

Late spring's heat, probably somewhere in the upper twenties, wasn't overbearing but running twenty kilometers in armor faster than a lot of people sprint gets a man warm. Sweat ran freely down his face, soaking into his beard. Sturdy pants were fantastic protection from the thin undergrowth, some of which possessed either thorn, nettle, or just a nasty contact poison. A few of the more enterprising botanicals held two or even all three.

Three beasts attempted to stalk them. One paid for the attempt with its life, the bear-like creature sprouting a fletched shaft from between its eyes, to drop to the forest floor.

Taipan tied a bright colored ribbon to a tree limb overhead, marking the corpse for processing when they returned. They had not the time to stop just now, but his mate hated wasting the bounty of the wood and wouldn't if they weren't being pressed. Bear meat was alright eating if done properly.

On they ran, eating the low, rolling coastal forest terrain up. Sandy loam beneath their feet was easy on the legs and they barely broke stride for having to deviate around thickets or obstacles. Even the creeks and bogs were tame, compared to the Iriel'en forests and the rough, rocky Highlands they'd recently come through.

Hands on his hips, breathing deep to bring his heart back to its resting rate, Ulric kept his eyes on the boles of the trees ahead. The great [Seaside Hickories] were thinning, something more like beech and maple were becoming more prominent in the makeup of the forest. These lower, wider spreading crowns made the forest denser, more difficult to see ahead. Smooth barked beech with grey-white bark swirled with orange was slightly disorienting. He could imagine getting lost with the tiger striping effect of those trunks screwing with his ability to select landmarks. The maples, other than their navy blue leaves, were very similar to Earthen counterparts.

"We must be careful in this place Ulric." Taipan spoke up, a touch of concern coloring her tone.

He raised his alertness a notch at that warning, bringing up [Ceraunoperception] to scan the surroundings through the electromagnetic.

Nothing entered the thirty or so meter range of his ability to clearly distinguish both biotic and abiotic features of the forest.

"What has you spooked love?" He asked.

She tilted her head slightly, listening, before she shrugged.

"Nothing specifically. Only that the wood is quiet for this time of year. I am not greatly versed in the creatures or flora that inhabit these forests, unfamiliarity demands caution. Especially when we carry about live bait." She said, indicating the standard Ulric bore.

Ah, right. That. He'd sort of forgotten that the Captain was pretty badly wounded and blood scent, even from closed wounds, would draw critters.

"Good call." He praised, "I'll keep [Ceraunoperception] up. You keep those lovely eyeballs peeled forward, I'll watch our flanks."

It was their standard operating procedure.

"Heard and understood, Glade Chief."

More slowly they made their way across the many small creeks, low rises, and increasingly sandy soil. The smell of ocean salt became more dominant in the air, carried in from the Vatyn. They were about half way to their destination now.

He froze, instincts blaring. Taipan was already drawing her bow, having detected danger slightly faster than he.

A blurring streak leapt from a thicket of thorny shrubs in time to avoid the arrow that buried itself through the space its head had been a moment before. Ulric could barely track the thing, it went straight up, entered the leafy crown of a [Dusk Maple] as he had come to think of the blue pinioned trees, and then broke sight.

"Holy shit! That thing is seriously quick." Ulric stated the obvious.

Another arrow was already at half draw upon Blinder, his Shadow taking no chances against the foe

"It is also intelligent. It saw my gaze focus on its hiding place and knew its cover was broken. It also knew that I could reach it from where we stand. This creature hunts people, probably has hunted them for years." She narrated, keeping her exquisite vision scanning the surroundings.

"Rear!" Ulric shouted, feeling the almost blindingly fast thing coming in from behind his vertebrae, aligned perfectly to a seeing creature's blind spot.

His core roared to life and Ulric flung a hand out behind him, not even turning before he unleashed the screaming arc of violet fury.

[Voltaic Riot]

A wrist thick ribbon of dancing lightning tore into the trail behind and intercepted the predator's charge. It came too close to the hunting arc and paid, the Ceraun jumping to the closing beast and carving deeply into its hide as it passed, forced aside from the lethal pounce it had intended on Ulric. Greyish blue blood sprayed him as it aborted its attack, breaking away from the jolting spell burning through its forelimb.

He noted vaguely feline features in the creature as it passed. Then it was gone, streaking into the brush, out of sight again.

So fast was the monster Taipan hadn't even been able to turn and attempt a shot on it. It was a damned fast learner.

"Okay, so you were right Taipan. This thing is fast as all hell, and definitely smart. It made sure its second attempt was from a blind spot and it didn't even attempt to hide, just tried pure speed to make the attack. It knows you can spot it. Now it knows I can too, as well as that I can harm it. I clipped it as it went by."

He had no way to know how badly he'd hurt the creature. Probably not lethally, it was too fast for that, but it had definitely taken a raking from his spell. [Voltaic Riot] packed a wallop, whatever this thing was, it couldn't be happy.

A blast of sound rose from the forest, a roar of pain and fury that was like a tiger with hints of elephantine resonance. The monkey in his ancestry did not care for that sound. At all.

"Yep, pissed it off." Ulric noted aloud.

Taipan laughed at his dry commentary and then her shadow came to life and enshrouded her. He saw his partner blur and nearly disappear, cloaked by her Iskios mana. Thankfully, [Ceraunoperception] could pierce the veil of that magic his partner used, revealing her presence to him. The monster that had thought to hunt them probably did not have the benefit of his electromagnetic perception.

The Huntress leapt vertically some three meters, hauled herself one handed into the lower limbs of the trees and vanished into the canopy above, all without a sound. As soon as she left the zone of his detection spell she was gone. Spooky lady.

Ulric kept his head on a swivel, his core sending yin after yang through his body, anticipating the need to call power again. Next time, he was going to pelt it with [Wind Blades], confident he could snare it with the tracking vacuum threads of Caelum needed to let the magicked wind scythes seek, and use a [Winter's Breath] to slow it down, if he could judge the trajectory well enough.

He'd drawn his sword by instinct, unconscious of the motion, and was glad again of all of Idra's teaching. Ulric knew precisely where his feet were, thanks to that Sword Master and he now appreciated how important that knowledge was. Where your feet are will determine where they will go, and where they will go should put your blade where your enemy was, and your body where his blade is not. It sounded simple. And it was. The devil was in the details.

In his other arm, he firmed up the grip on the greenwood flag staff. The Captain was screaming something into her gag but he didn't really pay it much mind. Woman was always howling about something.

For twenty minutes, Taipan played a weapons grade game of cat and mouse with their attacker. He only heard fragments of it. A muffled twang of bow here, a growling hiss there, and Taipan used curses in her mother tongue that he did not know, which told him things were tense.

Twice the creature tried for him, darting once from a tree above him, forcing him to throw the captive aside, lest she be ripped from stem to stern by hooked claws on a paw larger than a frying pan, and again a few minutes later, from over his shoulder. The dusty grey, white spotted, and mottled black patterned feline leapt for the back of his neck, only to be met by Xef'tocht and another flare of Ceraun. He missed, the monster vanished into a cloud of smoke, even as his sword passed through it, reconstituting behind him and dashing away into the brush. Taipan tore past him a half second later, in hot pursuit.

What the fucking fuck was that? Smoke teleport? He had no idea how a thinking, living creature could turn into smoke and retain consciousness. Scientifically speaking, that was bullshit.

He wouldn't have long to ponder, a sudden Elvish cry of battle was met by that spine tingling roar. Taipan was awfully mean in a fight, but this monster had to be a Greater beast. The fight played out for a few moments, eternal seconds in his mind. At last, a victor was decided.

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Taipan fled from the tree tops, jumping back to his side, shedding her stealth ability. She was clawed down one side, superficially, since no blood was flowing. It had fairly rent her coat though, the tough material cleanly slit from her armpit to her waist, four parallel tracks indicating how closely she'd come to being opened up. A few cuts and scrapes dotter her arms and one of her boots had a nasty gash along the back of the calf muscle, which was bleeding freely.

This thing had hurt his favored boots. It had to go.

"What you thinking lass?" Ulric asked, noting the excited twitch in his partner's ears.

She was all hopped up on blood lust now. No way she'd abandoned the fight. Glittering eyes took him in a moment, teeth flashing in a grin before returning to absolute focus.

"Worthy prey, Ulric. Your strike earlier was a good one, it has lost most of the use of its left forelimb. I have blinded an eye and debilitated it with [Twilight Flame]. It should be finding using that blasted cloud evasion skill more difficult now, with my mana in its body. That is how it nearly managed to maul me. Its hide is resistant to my Iskios blades though, I will have to use my knife and arrows."

Taipan's assessment confirmed his suspicions about it being a Greater, for surety. He would have thought that almost being filleted would have made her hesitant, but the dusky Iriel'en had her knife out with an eager look to her.

"So, uh, you just gonna go in there after it with that?" Ulric checked, skepticism tainting his question.

She tilted her head in confusion before answering his question with her own, "Why not?"

Iriel'en. Madhouse bastards, every single one of them.

"Nothing important, Taipan. Nothing important. Here, let me try something first though."

Ulric couldn't see the creature, it was too good at hiding in the tree tops, but he didn't need to see it to hit it with [Wind Blades].

A score of fletchettes made from hardened Caelum shot into the branches from which Taipan had just recently arrived. The blurred form of the cat shot away an instant before the projectiles tore through the leaves that had hidden it, scattering bark chips, cut branches, and foliage like a shotgun blast.

Damn that thing really was agile! Even on three good legs it zipped away, difficult for his eyes to track. Like a puma. Or a Leopard.

"Well, I have to admit, it's probably too fast for most of my spells to hit unless I know from where it's coming." Ulric confessed.

He could probably get it if he was willing to burn down the forest but that didn't set well with him. There had to be some way to limit the thing's outrageous mobility, without just splashing magic around hoping to get lucky.

The Captain was straining against her bindings, jerking fitfully, her wide eyes fearful. There was a chance she knew what they were fighting, or, at minimum, knew of it.

"You think this one here knows what's out there?" He asked, bobbing his chin towards the mummified decoration on the end of his flag pole.

Taipan rejected that out of hand, with her typically straight line reasoning.

"We already know what it is, a predator that is hunting us, using the advantage of its home territory to remain unseen while it tries to find an opportune death blow. If they knew how to kill it, it would be dead. Which means that they do not, and that remains our problem."

He couldn't argue with that kind of logic.

"Fair enough. I am open to suggestions." Ulric notified her.

Taipan reaffirmed her grip on her knife hilt, "The new plan is the old plan. Be ready. I will drive the panther from the trees, but you must make a certain thing of it."

Ulric was getting some déjà vu. Wasn't this what had basically happened last time?

"Why don't I go up there and you stay down here to make a certain thing of it?" He asked.

"Because it will close its mouth over your neck before you make it to the lowest limbs and carry you off to eat later." She replied, terse, but entirely serious.

Fantastic. He wanted to object but Taipan was already cloaked and gone, dashing up into the trees again, leaving him to stand there on the forest floor like a schmuck, waiting.

Endless seconds rolled by. He heard rustlings from above but saw nothing. No more attempts came from the monster to leap at him from the bushes so it must have been evaluating its options. His Shadow, in all her fury, was not going to grant it time to recover from its earlier wounds, nor adjust to its recent partial blinding. It made sense, the best way to deal with most ambushes was to fight into them.

A yowl of pain, shaking of the trees, and a flare of Iskios announced Taipan's gambit. Locked together, knife buried in the monster's neck, Umbral armor around her forearm holding its wicked teeth at bay as the two of them fell from the branches his mate had suddenly slashed apart from around the both of them, leaving the two to fall. Just before they impacted, Taipan pulled her legs in and planted them against the [Cloud Leopard], leaping away from it in an acrobatic spin that let her hit the soft, sandy forest floor in a roll, bleeding off momentum.

The cat cost itself a smooth landing by clawing at her while she jumped away, raking her back and shoulder, digging into bicep, but unable to find deep purchase through her defensive ability to haul her back in. It landed roughly, Taipan's dagger in its neck, and three lesser gaps bleeding freely in its pelt along back and side, where she'd punched into a lung to cripple it during their scrum, lacing her blows with [Twilight Flame] to debilitate the monster. It never got the chance to rise and the shadow fire within it corrupted its attempts to unsubstantiate.

Ulric was already harnessing his strength, raising Xef'tocht over his shoulder, building the separation of Ceraun's essence that would carry its wrath into the Greater beast. When Taipan jumped clear he crow hopped into his throw of the Sith, sending the sword into a blurring spin of enchanted metal already crackling with power poured into it. Ulric bound the electromagnetic to his will, the gathered Ceraun joyful to be unleashed.

Xef'tocht hit the panther in the side, biting deeply, if at an odd angle, as if it might shear off the creature's hip. Even as it screamed its challenge, Ulric answered with thunder.

[Lightning Javalin]

Ceraun bridged them, connected the two with coruscating violet lightning. Ulric held the energy, twisting it, reversing the polarities, sending the power back to himself, absorbing the bolt into his core before returning it again. And again, and again, and again.

Four times, Ceraun lanced between them, following the path of ionized air, racing with the joy of a child wielding Thor's hammer. Cracks of thunder blasted the forest at every stroke against the Norse god's anvil.

When he released the spell, his core feeling strained by the act of restraining the lightning, he was certain that the beast would not rise again. This was the ultimate form of his [Lightning Javalin], sustained thunderbolts that lost little of their potency, fueled by free flow of his mana.

The panther was charcoal. And not one piece of it.

He didn't stop to even check on the thing, [Ceraunoperception] barely even registered it, most of the liquid inside it having been flash boiled. High voltage, high current interactions with biological things were not kind to them.

Instead, he sprinted to his downed mate, her blood running from the wounds left by the beast's claws. However the hell her [Umbral Armor] worked, solid shadows was outside his philosophy, it had very definitely saved her life. Slashes that should have almost torn her apart had instead left only the slightest parting of her Persian hide. Her clothes, on the other hand, were not so fortunate. They were ribbons.

He rolled her over ungently to inspect all the wounds, hands clearing the rags to ascertain the extent of the damage.

"Yeeouch! Ulric, not so roughly, the cut was shallow until you went hamfists on it!" She snapped.

Ulric gently judo chopped the top of her head, "Be still! Or I will tie you to the banner for safe keeping." He threatened.

He wasn't joking. She knew it, and stopped her struggling, letting him finish canvassing the scratches. They weren't bad, really. Drawn as if by a scalpel, but not deep enough to be worrisome. Once again, his Shadow had earned herself some scars, but had avoided anything that might cause lasting damage. He'd taken worse on his shoulder from the Captain's solar spear.

"You should receive stitches for these." He informed her calmly, breaking out the bandaging and other medical supplies from his belt pouch.

She frowned but didn't object, she knew well that tending minor cuts would accelerate their healing by three fold, making them less a hindrance to them should they find battle joined again soon. She offered him her arm and he took the sleeve of her coat, helping her out of it without worsening the four razor slices that ran from spine, across powerful back muscles and shoulder blades and ending at her deltoid and just under an armpit. The blood ran free but not swiftly, already starting to clot.

They got her shirt off without much trouble, giggity, and he got to really see the extent of the slash. Hot damn, that cat had gotten her good. Without her [Umbral Armor] and the tough material of the coat Taipan would have been laid open to the bones.

He didn't have a small hospital and apothecary around his waist like his Shadow-Wife did, but he had the basics. A numbing herb paste in a wood box, fine silk gauze, even finer silk thread for suturing, and a hooked needle with which to run the sutures. He daubed the first of the cuts with gauze to clear the wound of blood and conjured a minor flame to sterilize the needle. Then he applied the analgesic paste using the same piece of gauze and set to sewing closed the first of the tracks down her back and shoulder. She took it stoically. Ulric was no chirurgeon but he'd been sewing his own clothes since the early days in the glade. One stop knot was much like the next. Twenty minutes later, his Taipan was stitched back together and keenly unhappy about it.

"Why do we always meet with such monsters when we try to take walks, Ulric?" She complained.

"Because we are loved by Varda, and she sends us her gifts. Just look at what a core this thing has delivered to us!" Ulric told her, pulling free the light gray and white streaked core that had powered the feline creature's cloud form and wicked speed.

Facets caught the light, breaking it into almost foggy dispersion around the crystalline arcane nexus. Ulric's attempts to ping the mana within it revealed a hybrid waveform, Caelum, Aquae, Iskios, all woven together seamlessly. Subtle was the influence of the shadow portion of this manaform but it acted as a synergistic note in the chord of the magic. Fascinating. Ulric was just barely scratching the surface of Varda's magic. Just cataloguing all these diverse types of mana would be a life's work. Cloud mana. How fascinating indeed.

"We are on our way to force our enemies to bargain and you have been forced to utilize a sizeable portion of your mana, while I have gotten my hide striped and my garments are tatters. This does not much inspire the proper mindset in our enemies, behind their great stone walls." The Iriel'en paragon reminded him.

True. Or, perhaps not. Ulric tied the freshly cleaned skull of the Greater beast to the banner pole and stuffed the core into the fanged maw, binding it in place as well. Maybe they had now a second piece of bargaining power: personal threat. Anyone who could eliminate a monster like that [Cloud Leopard] was a serious problem. They'd almost easily be able to slip into a city and take victims of choice. Not that Ulric intended to do so, or to give Taipan any such orders, but the threat stood, none the less.

"You know, these people don't know a whole hell of a lot about Elves, for all they wanted their little war with them. Maybe you could just tie the strips into fancy braids and they'll think it's a weird Iriel'en war jacket or some stupid shit." Ulric pondered aloud.

Taipan dead eyed him, as if it were the dumbest thing she'd heard in a quarter century. Then her gaze lit up and she started giggling, before grimacing at her back.

"You are a genius Ulric! Only a worms in the head Valin would think of such a thing! It will work, these fools will swallow this ox dung whole and be wanting seconds!" She crowed.

He took no offense at her slander of his race. He might actually be a little crazy and these people were actually mentally handicapped for pissing off the Elves and turning a long standing low grade cold war into a genocidal campaign of extinction. Especially when their entire empire relied on not rocking the economic boat and building the illusion of prosperity through submission and intentional mediocrity.

Competence like the Captain's over there should not have been as rare as it was amongst the Prespangers, even for shorter lived races, yet it was so in Prespang. They sucked. They were being trained wrongly, on purpose, that they were easier to control and less of a threat to the powers that be. That might have been a funny joke, had it not gotten so many young men and women killed to no purpose, avoidably.

Fuck it, their problem, not his, Ulric decided.

"So it'll work? They'll be suitably impressed?" He checked.

"Just you wait, Glade Chief. I think I have seen something like this before, some Aktinian traders hosted island folk who had odd, but definitely provocative ideas about evening attire." She promised.

Deft fingers wove intricate patterns into the strips of fabric. She even found some long fern fronds and incorporated these into the weave, creating a live green, tan, and brown plait that Ulric had to admit had a definite aesthetic appeal, if you were into tassels and such. Half an hour of walking later, she finished her task with a "Ta-da-da!"

And Ulric helped her into the ruined coat. It wasn't unattractive on her. Not at all. The shortened lengths of it on one side lended the thing an asymmetry that was almost artistic, like avant-garde fashion. It also left one shapely buttock in her sturdy, but form fitting pants exposed above the thigh hight leather boot, the full, rounded curve revealing that she was not skipping leg day.

The one boot's leather was still ruined but it would keep until they found a chance to patch it, the calf beneath just needed a bit of bandaging and was good to go. Bastard cat.

Ulric whistled slowly. Not so bad. No sirrah. The sultry wild woman with her ragged clothes and dusty "ribbons" was a hit with him.

"I'm not going to lie to you lass, I think that look is fair the bees knees." He praised.

Grinning the Elf woman did a slow turn, popping her hip, before giving him a coquettish over the shoulder come hither and a blown kiss. Vavoom!

"Yeah, okay, we're having something like that made for you when we get back to Iriel. That's just sexy time in my lizard brain." He informed her dutifully.

"Praise me more, Ulric. I will have you frothing before we reach Kistalfer!" Purred the Elf woman.

He grinned but looked away, she was doing that swaying thing with her hips that was going to cost them time if he let himself watch.

"Easy, now, lass. Don't go getting us sidetracked riding a post "killed the Greater Beast" high. We'll celebrate later. Privately. Gratuitous celebration. And probably a fair bit of humping, if I'm entirely honest with you." Ulric told her, trying to hang on to decorum while the thought of her inside the shelter in that getup started playing in his mind's eye.

Welp. Time for mental calculus! The Lagrangian equation of motion states that the generalized force function "P" is the time derivative of the kinetic energy function "T" differentiated over the first derivative of the general coordinate "q" minus the kinetic energy differentiated over the general coordinate "q". Fuck me, it's not working, that bottom is shaking.

Partial differential equations it is then! That would take the stiffening out of a piece of rebar.

Ulric preserved the sanctity of their mission by running through maths that made him want to pull his own teeth and chew rocks and Taipan amused herself by making less noise than he did while also doing the lewdest "booty dance", as her mate called it, that she could manage without pulling her stitches.

In this manner they came to the edge of the coastal forest and its eye twisting orange and white Beech and those stunning blue maples. There, in the open just a few short kilometers away, was the site where they had caught the garrison troops making camp and employed chemical weapons to lay them low, before they could fall on the freeman village.

That hadn't saved the village, in the end. It had certainly saved the villagers, for the most part.

Three species of scavenger bird circled and yips and barks of small canids or foxes or racoon dogs or some shit said that a great feast was underway.